


Make This Go On Forever

by Mellaithwen



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brotherly Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e23 How to Stop an Exploding Man, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-02
Updated: 2007-08-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:16:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1399402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellaithwen/pseuds/Mellaithwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag for “How To Stop An Exploding Man.”  <em>A lasting embrace is all they have.   </em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Make This Go On Forever

 

*-*-*

Peter forgets about Nathan for a moment. He forgets that whenever he’s afraid his brother is there for him. He forgets as he’s confronted by what he thinks he should call his nemesis. He feels betrayed.

His fingers start to sting.

“Turns out, you’re the villain, Peter,” Sylar taunts as the panic wells up inside of the youngest Petrelli. He hears Charles’ voice in his head telling him that  _he_  is the good one, that  _he_  who can love unconditionally will save the world. But his hands are pulsing, thrumming with too much energy, too much power, enough to destroy and to kill millions, and he can’t stop it.

He looks to Hiro when Noah can’t raise the gun. And when Hiro disappears Peter begs Claire to  _“Do it, do it! You’re the only one, Claire.”_

Peter forgets about Nathan for a moment. He forgets that whenever he’s afraid his brother is there for him. He forgets but remembers all of a sudden when Nathan comes through for him. When he lands and stops a shot being fired.

When he stays.

*-*-*

“I took his power, Nathan, I can’t control it,” Peter says all at once, his eyes darting as the panic builds. The city’s fate is in his hands, in his burning palms.

The power of an atomic bomb at his fingertips.

He thinks of American History lessons and the pictures he’s seen. He thinks of Memorial Days and documentaries. He thinks and panics and longs for Nathan to make it okay.

“I can’t do anything,” Peter blurts out frantically.

“I’m not leaving you, Peter.” But suddenly, Peter wants nothing more than for Nathan to be far, far away. “There’s another way to end this, and you know it.”  _Far, far away._

“I can’t let you die.”

“And I can’t let everyone else,” Nathan tells him simply, calmly. He steps forward against the heat. “You saved the cheerleader so we could save the world.”

Another beat and a stronger pulse emanates from Peter’s hand. He clenches his fists tighter, but Nathan can see it won’t hold it off for long. Heidi and the boys are safe, and as long as Peter’s off the ground, Claire and the city will be too.

Nathan thinks of a jagged piece of glass smeared with his brother’s blood and cerebral fluid. He thinks of falls when they were kids, of their father’s death. He thinks of how Peter was there for him after the crash and that no matter how many times he pushed him away, he still stayed.

He thinks of the responsibility on his shoulders to keep his little brother safe. He thinks of his failings and he thinks of holding Peter outside of a police station as his brother collapsed in his waiting arms. He thinks of keeping an impatient vigil by his brother’s side at the hospital.

But Peter will survive this. He has to.

“I love you, Nathan.”

“I love you too.”

Nathan looks up to the skies. He wonders if he should bother aiming for a specific spot. That maybe if he has a star to focus on or aim for, it might make it easier to get there. To reach a destination up there without the world’s future weighing him down while he’s already trying so hard to hold his baby brother aloft.

He lowers his eyes from the heavens and back to his younger brother when he asks, “You ready?”

*-*-*

A lasting embrace is all they have.

As they shoot off into the unknown, into the dark of night with no floor beneath them their only anchor is each other. Peter holds tightly to the stiff material of his brother’s suit. Fingers gripped, he’s so afraid. He clenches his fists and scrunches his nose. His teeth chatter as they rise higher, and he tries even harder to make the burning go away.

Nathan won’t let his brother go; his firm grasp is on the soft material of his brother’s top. He’s calm. His face, his mind...it’s calm, and although Peter hears many things in his brother’s head, and he sees pictures and memories clear as day, the thing he sees the most, hears the most is  _“I’m sorry.”_

Peter sees the world’s hero; a saviour guiding him upward. Nathan stops caring about the world as they soar past the roof of Kirby Plaza. He stops caring about saving a city and tries so hard not to think of what comes next. He thinks of his brother’s bright white soul burning in the future from the guilt and the pain. Stopping that is what keeps him holding on, even when the heat is so intense that they’re both going to start screaming soon.

Nathan’s hand guides his brother’s head into the crook of his own neck.  He feels the thrum of Peter’s pulse. Desperate and erratic. Nathan wants nothing more than to calm him down, to tell him;  _it’s okay now_ , but he’s been lying to his brother for too long as it is.

All they can have is the truth, the bare naked honesty that will see them through this if they only try.

A tear starts to fall down Peter’s cheek but the intensity of everything is too much, and it dissipates into nothingness from the heat.

Nathan holds his brother,  _holds_  him. Comforts him, his baby brother, because they don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Or rather they do. They’d just prefer to pretend they don’t.

Nathan leads them to safety; he guides them up, up, and away from the city, away from the staring eyes beneath. Away from the bloody bodies, the pain and confusion. Away from whatever planned out destiny their parents mapped out for them. He flies upward in seconds that pass like days, like weeks.

He holds Peter tightly and ignores the burn that starts to push through his fingertips. The same burn that Peter desperately doesn’t want him ever to feel.

There’s an image in Peter’s head, haunting him. He hopes to God it isn’t one of Isaac’s visions. He prays that the scarred and burnt carcass, the eerie skeleton in his mind isn’t Nathan’s. And that this won’t all end in the worst case scenario. That hope and good will prevail despite an impending nuclear disaster.

  
_This is my burden not yours_ , Nathan thinks he hears, but he can’t be sure past the roaring wind that is their existence in mid-air.

There are no last words that can ease Peter’s own understanding. There’s nothing Nathan can say that will make this better. He can’t fix everything, but he’ll save the world. With Peter by his side, in his embrace, in his hold, they  _will_  save the world.

They  _have_  saved the world.

The sky lights up with a giant boom. A round orange glow that intensifies however far away it may be and everything burns. A transparent blue ring surrounds the blast, and the glow dims in the night sky.

Clouds scatter like insects running from the heavy boot that taunts them. They’re pushed back in the same way skyscrapers would have been had Peter stayed on the ground below and Nathan done nothing. They vanish as countless lives would have in a future that has now been prevented.

_The future isn’t written in stone._

Come morning the skies will have never been so clear. Birds will fall from above, unlucky crows caught in crossfire of the unlikeliest of events. Broken beaks bent and destroyed. Among them, two figures will come crashing down like feathers picking up speed as they burn up in the atmosphere.

Down below the city will keep going. Workers will work and children will smile and men and women, different from the rest, will discover abilities they never knew they had.

A mother will return from whatever safe haven she escaped to. Alone, she will close the blinds in her son’s campaign office as she takes solace there. She won’t know what to feel, and when her grandsons parade through in search of their father, she won’t know what to tell them or their mother.

She won’t tell them about the greater good; she won’t argue her case or try to explain. And she certainly won’t mention Linderman’s name. No, she’ll smile at her daughter-in-law and greet the boys with a polite hug. She’ll say,  _“He’ll be here soon,”_  and watch the door.

They’ll wait in silence.

The future isn’t written in stone and not one of them knows what will happen next.

**- _Fin._**

.


End file.
